Alternative Title

Meru generation : instructions of use : an inquiry into the sociological setting up of a bantu generation-classes system, Meru Tigania-Igembe, Kenya

Abstract

East african age-classes systems have mostly been studied among pastoralist peoples, and have been regarded as a kind of organisation more involved in ritual matters than in anything else. The study of such a system among the Meru of Kenya who are mainly agriculturalists, shows that this kind of organisation is not linked with an economical specialization. Moreover the search of the rules which operate into the class system, allows to explain the working of these classes, which in fact are generation based, and the ways they are related to the other aspects of the social organization. Eventually, an unusual historical and demographical approach of this kind of structure is brought by the cross-study of the oral traditions and the colonial archives.